Chapter Six
Brady
“I can’t fucking believe this,” I said, shaking my head and downing the last of my beer. Nick and I sat at one of my favorite hangouts in Dallas, the Red Dog Bar. Barely two o’clock in the afternoon and my day had been shot to smithereens. After my unfortunate visit with Dad, I had called Nick, full of bitterness and resentment. I asked him to meet me here.
For once he didn’t look strung out. For the first time in a while, his eyes were clear. Surprisingly clear, considering our transatlantic flight and the fact that he had been indulging in coke, booze, and God knows what else for days before that.
“What brought this on so suddenly?” Nick asked, sipping his own beer and nearly tsking with commiseration. “And he threatened to cut you off if you didn’t do what he said?”
“That he did,” I affirmed, still disbelieving. “He’s already cut off my access. Now I have to go beg and plead with Frederick to remove the block on my accounts and cards if—and only if—I agree to go along with his egregious plan. He’s serious, Nick. Dead serious.” Running my hands through my hair, I felt lightheaded. That could have been because I was on the edge of physical and emotional exhaustion at this point, but I had a deep-down feeling that this time, my dad was not throwing out an empty threat. I don’t know how many times I’d muttered my surprise, not only on my way to the bar, but sitting here with Nick.
Impossible!
Are you kidding me?
He can’t be serious…
I knew that this time, he probably was. He hadn’t prefaced the ultimatum with the usual lecture. Like he’d really reached his limit and didn’t want to waste any more breath on me. I avoided the feelings pinging around in my brain. Didn’t want to go there. I sighed.
“He even suggested Mary Von Brown! Can you believe it?”
“Which one is she?”
I grimaced, growing impatient with Nick’s questions. “A daughter of one of my dad’s business partners. A little younger than me.”
“But she’s rich, right?”
I looked up at Nick, the pulse now pounding in my forehead. I felt it, almost to the point it was making me nauseous. “What the hell difference does that make?”
For the briefest of seconds, he looked at me, eyes wide and confused. “I didn’t… that came out wrong, Brady,” he backpedaled. “What I mean is… well, if she’s rich, that’s good, isn’t it? It can be a marriage in name only, you know? One of those marriages of convenience. It’s not like you have to sleep with her.”
“Oh but I do,” I disagreed. “Did you forget the part where my dad insisted he have a grandchild within a year’s time?” I grumbled. “You’re missing the point, Nick. He just suggested Mary Von Brown. He didn’t insist on it. In fact, he didn’t insist that it had to be any specific woman. It’s the point of the thing, don’t you get it? My God, it’s not like we live in the eighteenth century, where arranged marriages were the norm!”
Nick took the last gulp of his beer and then set the mug on the table with a resounding thud. “Well then, what about Tiffany? Or, maybe Desiree… yeah, either one of them would be good, wouldn’t they?”
I scowled at him, deliberately making an attempt to relax the muscles in my face. My jaw was grinding so hard I thought I might crack teeth. “Are you insane, Nick? They were lays, and that’s all!”
“But they were good lays, right?”
I sighed, striving to rein in my rising temper. Let it go. Let it go! “It would be better if it’s somebody that nobody knows. Nobody in my circle, nobody in your circle, and especially nobody in Dad’s circle. And no one with a questionable past.” I eyed Nick. “You know Dad will run a background check on anybody I introduce. You know that, don’t you?”
Nick bit the corner of his lip and then nodded. “You’re right. It has to be somebody who doesn’t have a record.” He shrugged. “So what are you thinking?”
“Hell if I know.” I also shrugged. “It has to be a complete stranger. The whole fucking charade will only last a year. If I choose someone that I already know, it’ll only complicate things.”
“Complicate things how?”
I counted to ten. “This has to be strictly a business deal. An arrangement. Nothing more and nothing less. If the person I choose has a history with me, they could use it against me at the end of a year. You get it?”
“You mean with the baby and all?”
My head felt like it was going to split open. “Yes, Nick, with a baby and all. Dad wants me to present him with a grandchild within a year. Now how the hell am I supposed to do that?” I sat back in the booth. “How the hell am I supposed to convince a woman to have a baby with me? It’s not like you can just snap your fingers and have somebody get pregnant. Sometimes, those things take time.”
Nick chortled. “You’ve never complained about the process before.”
I gave him a dirty look. “That’s because I always made sure to either wear a cover or that my partner had some kind of birth control going.”
Nick nodded, lips pursed in thought. “What about Jessica?”
“Who the hell is Jessica?”
“Exactly!” Nick grinned. “You remember that old friend of mine from high school? Greg? It’s his sister.”
I slapped my hand against my forehead, glaring at Nick. “What about complete stranger don’t you get, Nick?”
“Oh, sorry.”
“Like I said, a business deal. One year. One baby. One payment.”
“So you want to pay someone to pretend they’re your wife, give birth to your baby, and then disappear after the baby’s born?”
It sounded awful when he put it like that, but I nodded.
“And what if the woman doesn’t want to give up her baby once it’s born?”
I didn’t even want to think about that. “Maybe if the payment is right, she would. Hell, it’s not like the baby is being… my dad wants a grandchild. He’ll make sure it’s taken care of. It’ll have the best of everything.” I felt like a schmuck even saying it. “Besides, she would have to sign a contract agreeing to exactly that.”
Nick shook his head. “I don’t know, Brady, it’s tricky business.”
“Not really,” I said. “What about surrogates who agree to carry babies for other people? They do it all the time.”
“Yeah, but they know what they’re getting into from the very beginning. How many women do you know would sign a contract to marry, produce a baby, and then just leave? I don’t know, man, it’s like opening a Pandora’s box.”
Didn’t I know it. The sarcasm heavy in my voice, I threw it out there. “What do you think about two hundred grand? Is that enough of an incentive?”
Nick whistled. “I think it’s a fuckin’ lot of money.” He grinned. “I’d do it if I had the right parts.”
I made a face. “Nick, this isn’t funny, and it’s not the time to be making jokes.”
“Got it, bro.” He nodded, leaning back in the booth. “So how exactly do you think you’re going to approach a woman with this deal of yours? You gonna just pick someone off the streets?”
“I don’t know. It’s not like I have experience in this kind of thing.”
We sat in silence for several moments until Nick slapped his hand down on the table. “What about Craigslist?”
I was about ready to throttle him. “That is stupidest idea I’ve ever heard. Craigslist? You know how many nut job skanks are going to crawl out of the woodwork if they see that?” I shook my head. “Besides, I’m not going to settle for just anyone.”
“You said you have to present the girlfriend on Saturday. You don’t have a lot of time to pick and choose. You said it was just a business deal. For one year. You don’t have to get attached. Fuck her every night until she’s pregnant, and then you’re done.”
I cringed again. God, that sounded awful. Crass. I was sinking to the depths of my depravity. Could I really go through with this? The thought of being written out of my father’s will was sobering, but was I this shallow? Was I really willing to find a woman, any woman, to have a baby to present to my father in order to hang onto the family fortune?
Hell yes.
I didn’t like it, and I liked myself even less for it, but that was the plain and honest truth.
“Craigslist is perfect,” Nick continued. “A perfect stranger. No attachments. Strictly business. Isn’t that what you wanted?” He chuckled as he pulled his cell phone from his pocket and began tapping.
“What are you doing?”
“Writing up an ad, what do you think?”
“No, Nick, I’m not ready.”
He continued tapping. “We obviously can’t type up an ad that says you’re looking for a temporary wife, a baby, and then you’re going to cut them loose. That would be just wrong, man.”
“So on top of all this ridiculousness, I have to be deceitful?” My own words taunted me. Of course I was being deceitful. What was one more lie? I felt… not sure. Disgusted? Desperate? Ashamed?
“If you want a decent woman, yeah, you have to be deceitful.” He kept tapping on the screen, then paused, nodding with satisfaction. “How about this? Successful businessman looking for personal assistant. Duration: one year. Must be young and attractive. Live-in position. Salary: two hundred thousand. No experience necessary.”
“I wouldn’t answer that ad if you paid me a million bucks.”
Nick glanced down at the screen, tapping some more. “Okay, how about preferably young and attractive, intelligent, and self-motivated?”
“Still sounds kind of creepy to me. Forget it, Nick.”
“That’s where the interview process will come in,” Nick said. “When you start getting callbacks, we can explain that appearance is important, as she’ll be involved in dealing with high powered business dealings.”
I sighed, still not liking it, not one bit. There had to be a better way, but I didn’t see it. Either go through with this or lose everything. Just meeting a woman—a woman different from the ilk I was used to anyway, that would be agreeable to such a deal seemed unlikely. Plus, it could take time. Time was something that I didn’t have. Still, I felt like… like a sleaze-ball.
It wasn’t right and I knew it, but I didn’t feel I had much of a choice. One year. My God, that left about three months to find a woman, ensure that she wasn’t on contraceptives, and then fuck the hell out of her until she got pregnant. If I didn’t explain that a baby was part of the deal from the get-go, the woman might very well choose to have an abortion if she got pregnant. That couldn’t happen.
What a mess. I felt sick to my stomach.
“I gotta hit the head,” Nick said.
I nodded, not really paying attention. My thoughts focused inward, feeling sorry for myself, resenting the hell out of my dad, and wondering what the hell I was supposed to do. How could he put me in such a position? Didn’t he realize… but it was me who had blabbed that I had a girlfriend. A serious girlfriend. If I hadn’t said that, I’m sure I would have had more time. But no, I’d shot off my mouth, and here I was.
And I was supposed to bring her to meet him on Saturday.
Forty-eight hours. I had forty-eight hours to present a woman to my dad. Forty-eight hours to convince that woman to pretend to be my fiancée. Forty-eight hours to convince a woman to convince my father that we had been dating for some time.
I groaned and buried my face in my hands. How had it come down to this? And why now? Why was my father all of a sudden so hell-bent on an heir? He wasn’t that old; he was only fifty-seven-years-old. He had decades left to go. What was the rush?
But I had made it clear, hadn’t I? More than once over the past few years, I had made it clear that I wanted nothing to do with his business, nor taking it over someday. Was I wrong? What if—
“Don’t worry, Brady, things will work out okay.”
I glanced at Nick as he slid into the booth and caught the attention of the bartender, indicating with two raised fingers that we needed two more beers over here.
I needed more than beer.